His mouth still carried an onion-and-sausage aftertaste from the meal he had eaten during a long stop at Leipzig. When the train pulled into the Berliner station at midnight, Esau longed to disembark and go home, change clothes, clean himself, and get a good rest. He could take another train the following morning.
But Speer would find out. The Reichminister had given him very clear orders. So Esau remained on the train, staring out the window with sleepy eyes at the echoing, uncrowded station, knowing he had to arrive in Peenemunde as soon as possible. He asked the conductor for another blanket, but it failed to warm him from the winter chill.
Somewhere out there, people were trying to ignore the war and get ready for Christmas. Esau had no wife or children to bother about such things, and all those whom he might call his friends were merely colleagues, and colleagues did not treat each other for holidays. Especially not in times like these.
He drank several cups of tea the next morning and ate a croissant. The train arrived at Stettin just after sunrise, and Esau transferred to a different train. They reached Wolgast an hour later. After the conductor’s announcement, Esau stood up, took his valise from the rack overhead, then moved his aching body off the train.
The island of Peenemunde lay on the northern coast near Rugen, just across the water from Bornholm and the Swedish mainland. The island, about ten miles long, looked like a splayed chicken’s foot, with three toes on the southward end pointing into the wide Oder Lagoon, while the narrow top half of the island extended into the Pomeranian Bay in the Baltic Sea. The island lay next to the German mainland, separated by a channel of water.
In the adjacent city of Wolgast, Esau found a ferry to take him across the half-frozen river to the restricted area on the island. Children skated on the ice shelves near the mainland, as if nothing could possibly be wrong with the world.
Barbed wire and slatted-wood fences bordered the edge of Peenemunde. A railroad extended from the ferry landing to various parts of the island for delivering supplies and equipment, but Esau found no train in sight.
As the ferry landed and he disembarked, shivering in his overcoat and carrying his own valise, a team of guards came out to meet him. He let them inspect his papers from Reichminister Speer, and one of the men took him in a car along the bumpy gravel roads of the island. Esau felt too sleepy and grumpy for conversation, and the guard drove without looking at him.
They passed dunes and thick stands of dark fir trees, a desolate-looking frozen lake, and small army settlements on the island—Trassenheide, Karlshagen, and various buildings obviously used for research or construction. At Peenemunde village, the guard let him off and sent Esau toward a set of small office barracks, telling him to ask for General Dornberger.
It took him another half hour, with his voice gradually rising in anger and impatience, before a lieutenant finally accepted his demand for the unscheduled meeting with the head of the research station. Apparently, Reichminister Speer had not telegrammed or telephoned ahead.
“The general is preparing for this morning’s test shot out at Stand X,” the lieutenant said. “We have orders not to disturb him during the final stages. Would you care to wait for him?”
Esau, feeling ruffled, stood his ground. “I would love to rest, change clothes, and eat a decent meal. But I cannot afford the luxury, and neither can General Dornberger. Reichminister Speer ordered me to see the general immediately upon arrival. I have been on a train all night. Don’t you have any inkling of who I am? I am the Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics for all of Germany. You will take me to General Dornberger—now!”
Esau seethed in the front seat of the battered car when they finally departed to find the general. Despite the winter cold, the lieutenant kept his window rolled down as they drove across the island to the preparation areas near Test Stand X.
General Walter Dornberger, when they finally found him, looked harried and focused entirely on the rocket test in progress. “Another one?” he said, assessing Esau. A gray-haired man with a boyish face, Dornberger’s build appeared slight in his gray uniform. He was not imposing or commanding, but Esau recognized a hard and practical intelligence behind his eyes.
“I am here on orders from Reichminister Speer—” Esau began, reaching into his overcoat for the detailed letter Speer had given him.
General Dornberger motioned for him to follow. The general’s smile and comfortable attitude displayed his pride in the project, and his familiarity with showing it off. “I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the test. Follow me, and we can answer questions a little later.”
“I have a letter from the Reichminister,” Esau said, holding out the folded note. “Here it is.”
“Only a handful of minutes left Professor, uh, Esau, was it? Let me try to explain everything as we finish the preparations.” He indicated a man beside him, “This is my colleague and our brightest hope, Dr. Wernher von Braun. He is of prime importance to this project.”
Von Braun stood tall and impressive, dapper in his dark suit and clean overcoat; he wore a tie that looked oddly incongruous in the rough conditions of the rocket test area. Most of the other people standing around wore Army uniforms, but von Braun seemed proud of the fact that he was a civilian. Von Braun’s dark hair was slicked back and neat even in the chaotic moments before the test.
“This one will work,” von Braun said. His eyes held a spark of defiance as he turned to Esau. “You’ll see.”
General Dornberger smiled. “Dr. von Braun is an optimist, and he occasionally forgets the difference between reality and his wild ideas.” Dornberger clapped a hand on the scientist’s shoulder. “He is also, though, usually right in whatever he says.”
“Today I am right,” von Braun said. He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes remaining. We should get to our observing posts.”
Dornberger disappeared through the door of a bunker. Esau and von Braun followed him down five concrete steps.
They went through a long underground corridor that led from the measurement room beneath the wall of the arena to the test stand itself. Double and triple rows of thick, heavy measurement cables ran along the corridor, making Esau feel as if he were hurrying down the gullet of some prehistoric beast.
They passed through a long room beside another tunnel. “This is a blast tunnel,” General Dornberger said, running his fingers against the concrete-block walls. “Those cooling pipes are four feet in diameter and can pump water at 120 gallons per second. They’re made of molybdenum steel. This wall is three feet thick. Even during a test, you can feel very little heat through it.”
Von Braun looked at his watch again and cleared his throat. “Five minutes.”
In an observation room, technicians studied readings from their instruments, monitored by red, white, or green indicator lights. Dornberger gestured rapidly, speaking so fast that the words made little sense. Esau got the impression that the general had done this tour many times before. “Those are voltmeters and ammeters here, frequency gauges and manometers over there. We need to check every aspect of the firing. You never know where something might go wrong.”
Two telephones rang at once. The technicians talked among each other. The general moved on. “This morning we’ll observe from outside. It’s more impressive that way.”
Dornberger hurried along the rising corridor through the pumping house and into the open air. Water tanks on wooden towers, twenty-five feet high, stood built into the sand wall surrounding the test arena. “We use these towers to recool the water after a test,” the general said.